Today, we are facing a global problem, which increases every year. This is the heavy traffic, including car traffic, air traffic and traffic at sea. The result is a huge increase in accidents every day leaving thousands of people injured or killed all over the world. In addition to affecting peoples health and lives, these accidents also involve a huge cost for the society. Accidents, on land, in air or at sea, may be related to many different reasons. In the western world, the statistics tells that the group that causes the most car accidents are young people around the age of 17-20 years old and professions such as food deliveries. Besides this, dangerous roads, sailing routs and frequently turbulent air spaces are areas of focus, when looking at statistics of accidents. By monitoring these risk groups or areas, the accident frequency may be reduced, as well the cost that follows the accidents.
Another important application is by creating an additional “Black box” for aircrafts, being a data storing and reporter means to monitor repeatedly the exact position of the aircraft in a more detailed way than it is done today. If an aircraft is outside its predefined route, a warning could be sent; to the air-traffic control. The warning signal could also comprise unusual flying behaviour. In today's systems the communication to the air-traffic control can be disconnected within the aircraft. This is a possible scenario, where an airplane is hijacked. In such cases it is impossible to monitor the trajectory of the aircraft. Accordingly by implementing such a data storing and reporter means in the fin or the tail of the aircraft as an example, the connection to the air traffic control cannot be interrupted.
It is apparent that there is a need for device, a data storing and reporter means, for obtaining a track record of a moving object.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,805,079 a system and method is presented for monitoring movements and performance of a motor vehicle, in order to locate it and determine the manner in which it is driven. This is solved by evaluating and recording the driving method over a period of time. One of the variables that is monitored is the acceleration or deceleration of the vehicle, determined by a sensing module. From the acceleration the location, the speed and direction of travel is calculated. It is however mentioned that the position of the vehicle may be determined from the Global-positioning-system (GPS). The operation of the system is controlled with a microprocessor, wherein a separate performance analysing computer with a fuzzy logic circuitry and a neural network circuit is provided to process data collected from the sensing device to analyse how the vehicle is driven.
Another invention is described in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,919,239-A patent, where a GPC receiver obtains GPS signals and automatically or manually stores information such as position and time of position. The system in this invention sends information from system/device to computer in a control unit where a track record can be created. A similar device has been described for airplane in JP 10035593. A tracking recorder for three-dimenstional positioning utilises GPS coordinates and calculates from these coordinates variables such as latitude, longitude and altitude. These informations can be used afterwards to, show the flight route.
US 2002/029109 A1 discloses s system for recording positional and operational data of a vehicle including a GPS receiver and a storage means for GPS data. The stored data may comprise parameters such as velocity and distance travelled, as well as supervision of a moving object with regard to a three-dimensional frame set.
The problem with the above systems is how complicated they are and the lack of real time processing and communication of collected and calculated data obtained and processed by these system. For example, these systems do not utilize the GPS coordinates in order to determine variables such as the acceleration and the perpendicular acceleration, which is important for determining in which manner a moving object is steered and how accurately it maintains it's route.